1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to semiconductor technologies, and more particularly to technologies for fabricating nano-floating gate memories and to the memories made thereby.
2. Background of the Invention
Currently, commercial nonvolatile floating gate memory devices use a continuous poly-Si floating gate and a thick SiO2 tunnel oxide to achieve ten-year retention time, resulting in high programming voltage, and slow programming speed. The advantage of a silicon-oxide-nitride-oxide-silicon (SONOS) structure, in which charges are stored in the nitride layer, is that it can operate at lower operating voltages than a continuous floating gate device. Another advantage of SONOS over the continuous floating gate device is the ease of processing due to its simpler layer structure. One problem that exists with the SONOS structure is the retention of the trapping layer at relatively higher temperatures.
By using isolated quantum dots (nanoclusters) instead of continuous floating gate and SONOS structure as charge storage nodes, local defect related leakage can be reduced efficiently to improve data retention. The memory node of nanocluster floating gate (nano-floating gate) memory includes multiple or single silicon nanocluster dots. The multiple floating dots are separated and independent, and electrons or holes are injected into the dots via different paths. The problem of endurance and retention can be greatly improved by such nano-floating gate memories. However, it may still be difficult to fabricate uniform and self-organized nanoclusters of Si, Ge, or SxGe1-x(SiGe). Most of the methods, including the chemical vapors deposition (CVD) and the ion implantation etc, require annealing at high temperatures.
Many fabricating techniques have been proposed to produce the semiconductor quantum dots floating gate including chemical or physical vapor depositing of a thin layer of the semiconductor materials followed by thermal annealing that lead to formation of separated quantum dots. Such examples include U.S. Pat. No. 6,297,095, entitled “Memory Device that Includes Passivated Nanoclusters and Method for Manufacture,” and U.S. Pat. No. 6,344,403, entitled “Memory Device and Method for Manufacture,” both filed by Muralidhar et al. on Jun. 16, 2000 and assigned to Motorola Inc. These two patents are herein incorporated by reference.
However, the main challenge for the currently used approaches is the difficulty of fabricating size-uniformed and size-controllable nanoclusters of the floating gate materials which are usually Si, Ge or SiGe. Conventional methods such as co-deposition of Ge or Si with dielectric materials such as SiO2 or other high dielectric constant (high-k) materials of HfO2 etc may result in nonuniform and non-controllable nanocluster size.